After seeing Longs from the top of the Twin Sisters this weekend, I decided to do some research and learn what I could about the mountain. If you want the history of the tallest peak in Rocky Mountain National Park, read on!
Intro
Longs Peak is one of Colorado’s 59 “Fourteeners” (14,000-foot summits) and is truly an iconic mountain of the state. It has a colorful history featuring eagle-trapping Arapaho and badass American mountain men, and has become one of the most popular peaks in the US. Longs can be seen from all around the region, including metro Denver on clear days, or on the back of the Colorado state quarter.
Data
According to the National Geodetic Survey, the elevation of Longs Peak is 14,259 feet, or 4,346 meters, making it the 15th highest peak in Colorado, and the 37th highest in the US. Longs is the highest peak in Rocky Mountain National Park and Boulder County. It is also the northernmost Colorado 14er and the only 14er in the Rockies that is north of 40°N latitude.
Longs has a prominence of 2,940 feet, the 11th highest in Colorado. (Prominence is a measure of a summit’s ‘independence’ so to speak. It categorizes the height of a mountain's peak based on the elevation between its summit and the lowest contour line that encircles it and no higher summit. General rule of thumb for a peak to be counted as its own independent summit is at least 300’ prominence.) Longs’ nearest neighbor is Mount Meeker, RMNP’s second highest point at 13,911’, which lies just to the southeast, creating one of the most impressive mountain cirques in the state.
Longs is not the highest peak in the Front Range, but is the most popular, attracting thousands of people each year. It is common to see hundreds of people along the trail during an ascent. A survey in 2002 estimated that approximately 9,500 people reached the summit that year.
Place in the Front Range
Despite not being the tallest, Longs is unquestionably the face of the Front Range. Longs has many distinguishing features, giving it several unique profiles and making it easily recognizable from many angles. The striking East Face is a sheer 2,000-foot wall that towers over Chasm Lake below. The large sweeping west face and the awesomely-named Keyboard of the Winds loom over Glacier Gorge. The broken south side forms very noticeable Notch, and then sweeps down to the Loft, a broad flat saddle that connects to Mount Meeker. Crowned by a huge granite block, the mountain has a broad profile and a flat expanse of a summit that can be distinguished when rising behind other mountains that obscure most of the peak.
Name
The namesake of Longs Peak is Major Stephen Harriman Long, an army officer who led an expedition surveying the Colorado Rockies in 1820. His team traveled south, along the foothills of the Front Range, and recorded the first documented sighting of the mountain. Long himself actually never got closer than 30 miles to the peak. The name Longs Peak was not given on the expedition, and first appeared on maps in 1825.
The Arapaho called Longs and Mount Meeker Nesotaieux, meaning “the two guides,” and used the prominent peaks as bearings when traveling on the plains. French fur trappers had a similar name for the pair, Les Deux Oreilles, meaning “the two ears.”
Major Long had a very prolific, though short, exploring career. He was commissioned as a lieutenant of engineers in the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1814, and then appointed a major during the 1816 reconstruction of the Army, serving as a topographical engineer under Major General Andrew Jackson.
In 1817, Long headed a military trip exploring the Mississippi River up to its confluence with the Minnesota River. He led a contingent of the 1819 Yellowstone Expedition up the Missouri River, for which he designed an experimental steamboat. The 1820 expedition he led that discovered his namesake mountain was launched to explore the lands of the Louisiana Purchase, specifically to find the sources of the Platte, Arkansas and Red rivers. In 1823 he led military expeditions of the US-Canada borderlands, exploring the Upper Mississippi Valley, the Minnesota River, and the Red River of the North. Long led only five expeditions, but covered 26,000 miles, and famously described the Great Plains as “a great desert.”
Following his military expeditions, Long worked as a consulting engineer for the railroads. He was appointed to a position in the US Corps of Topographical Engineers, remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War, and eventually became Colonel of the Corps until 1863, when it was merged in to the ACE. He died in 1864.
History
Longs Peak climbing lore starts with stories of Native Americans climbing to the tops of the peak to trap eagles and collect their feathers. French fur trappers might have been at the mountain as early as 1799, but there is little evidence any climbed it.
In 1864 William N. Byers and a man known only as Velie made attempts to climb the peak via the Keyhole and the Loft, but failed to make the summit. (They salvaged their trip with an ascent of Mount Meeker, only to find the names of a previous party at the top.) After declaring wings necessary to reach the summit, Byers returned to Longs in 1868 as a member of an expedition led by Major John Wesley Powell.
Powell was a one-armed Civil War veteran who would gain further explorer fame with the first boat trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. His Longs expedition left Grand Lake and, after some failed routes, seven men made the first documented ascent, and left their names in a can on the summit.
By 1871 there were guides taking tourists up the peak, and around the turn of the century the first technical routes were climbed. In the following decades, many new routes were established but the Keyhole Route still remains the easiest and most popular.
Climbing Today
There are over one hundred established routes to the top, but most are technical climbing routes on the east face, or the Diamond, which is one of the premiere big walls for climbing in the US outside of Yosemite. The standard route is the 15-mile round trip, semi-technical Keyhole Route that circumnavigates the upper mountain and takes an average of 10 to 15 hours to complete.
There is no trail to the summit; the maintained, designated trail ends at the Boulder Field, leaving 1.6 miles to go. From there, climbers must scramble over boulders to the Keyhole. From there, the best route is marked with red and yellow bull’s-eyes painted on the rocks, and traverses a series of narrow cliff ledges. After the Ledges, a broad gully of loose rock, called the Trough, must be crossed. Next, the Narrows crosses a sheer vertical rock face and ends at the base of the Homestretch. The Homestretch is a polished granite slab that gains passage to the summit. This section requires Class 3 scrambling, meaning using hands for balance and upward movement; climbing motions, not walking motions. There can be snow or ice on the rocks year-round, making this section extremely treacherous; the most ice-free, and therefore most popular, time to climb is mid-July through mid-September.
Some people camp at the Boulder Field to avoid the early morning start times necessary from the trailhead. The Agnes Vaille Memorial Shelter, built in 1927 at the Boulder Field, is listed on the National Register or Historic Places.
Disaster!
Many people tend to believe that because Longs is so popular, it is safer than other 14ers, but the opposite is the case; many climbers say that the greatest climbing hazard often is being below other people. To date, 57 people have died on Longs Peak, the majority from falls. Countless more suffer injury from the treacherous terrain, and ill effects from conditions such as exhaustion, hypothermia, and altitude sickness.
As with most mountains, many accidents occur on the way down, when fatigue or the false assumption that “the hard part is over” can lead to inattention and poor decisions. It is important to remember that the summit is only the halfway point! As the rangers will remind you, getting to the top of Longs isn’t a hike, it’s a climb! The Keyhole Route crosses vertical rock faces and narrow ledges, is exposed to falling rocks (why people above you are dangerous), and requires scrambling on all fours along steep cliffs and on loose rock. A single slip or trip could be fatal.
“Summit fever” is also a dangerous psychological condition that afflicts climbers. A general rule of thumb is to assess conditions when you arrive at the Keyhole: if they are looking bad, turn back! The problem is, once people get that far - only 1.5 miles to go - they are so focused on summiting that they push on despite deteriorating conditions. (This is also a problem with backcountry activities in winter, when people ignore avalanche warning signs because they don’t want to go home without getting “the goods.”)
On any day of the year conditions can turn bad (cold, windy, foggy, precipitation which makes rocks slippery) in a very short amount of time. Lightning is a major concern when climbing Longs Peak, or any exposed mountain. Afternoon thunderstorms are common, and getting off the peak before any dark clouds form is the reason for starting the hike at 3am.
Considering how many people attempt to summit each year, the number of accidents is pretty small. For more in-depth stories of tragedy on Longs Peak, and other 14ers, check out Colorado 14er Disasters, by Mark Scott-Nash.
Closing
Longs Peak really does stand out when scanning the peaks of the Front Range. I spend lots of time in Rocky Mountain National Park and it is usually visible, whether standing tall and proud in full view, or just poking out a bit higher into the sky than the mountains in front of it. Climbing Longs is certainly on my Colorado Bucket List and I’ve met a few people who have been on the top. It’s true that the climb is a serious undertaking (in my experience the NPS can make things out to be a bit more dangerous than they really are) so I’d like to get some other, tamer 14ers under my belt and get a little better at my rock climbing movements to ensure my confidence with the last 1.5 miles.
I’ve got plenty of photos of Longs from other hikes and seeing it really does inspire me; it keeps my thirst for adventure in exploring the area going strong. One of the best places to get amazing views of Longs (and Meeker) is from the Twin Sisters trail and summit:
Sources:
- 14ers.com/php14ers/historyview.php?parmpeak=Longs%20Peak&parmcat=GeologyIntro
Longs Peak is one of Colorado’s 59 “Fourteeners” (14,000-foot summits) and is truly an iconic mountain of the state. It has a colorful history featuring eagle-trapping Arapaho and badass American mountain men, and has become one of the most popular peaks in the US. Longs can be seen from all around the region, including metro Denver on clear days, or on the back of the Colorado state quarter.
Data
According to the National Geodetic Survey, the elevation of Longs Peak is 14,259 feet, or 4,346 meters, making it the 15th highest peak in Colorado, and the 37th highest in the US. Longs is the highest peak in Rocky Mountain National Park and Boulder County. It is also the northernmost Colorado 14er and the only 14er in the Rockies that is north of 40°N latitude.
Longs has a prominence of 2,940 feet, the 11th highest in Colorado. (Prominence is a measure of a summit’s ‘independence’ so to speak. It categorizes the height of a mountain's peak based on the elevation between its summit and the lowest contour line that encircles it and no higher summit. General rule of thumb for a peak to be counted as its own independent summit is at least 300’ prominence.) Longs’ nearest neighbor is Mount Meeker, RMNP’s second highest point at 13,911’, which lies just to the southeast, creating one of the most impressive mountain cirques in the state.
Longs is not the highest peak in the Front Range, but is the most popular, attracting thousands of people each year. It is common to see hundreds of people along the trail during an ascent. A survey in 2002 estimated that approximately 9,500 people reached the summit that year.
Place in the Front Range
Despite not being the tallest, Longs is unquestionably the face of the Front Range. Longs has many distinguishing features, giving it several unique profiles and making it easily recognizable from many angles. The striking East Face is a sheer 2,000-foot wall that towers over Chasm Lake below. The large sweeping west face and the awesomely-named Keyboard of the Winds loom over Glacier Gorge. The broken south side forms very noticeable Notch, and then sweeps down to the Loft, a broad flat saddle that connects to Mount Meeker. Crowned by a huge granite block, the mountain has a broad profile and a flat expanse of a summit that can be distinguished when rising behind other mountains that obscure most of the peak.
 |
| The Notch (not my photo) |
Name
The namesake of Longs Peak is Major Stephen Harriman Long, an army officer who led an expedition surveying the Colorado Rockies in 1820. His team traveled south, along the foothills of the Front Range, and recorded the first documented sighting of the mountain. Long himself actually never got closer than 30 miles to the peak. The name Longs Peak was not given on the expedition, and first appeared on maps in 1825.
The Arapaho called Longs and Mount Meeker Nesotaieux, meaning “the two guides,” and used the prominent peaks as bearings when traveling on the plains. French fur trappers had a similar name for the pair, Les Deux Oreilles, meaning “the two ears.”
Major Long had a very prolific, though short, exploring career. He was commissioned as a lieutenant of engineers in the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1814, and then appointed a major during the 1816 reconstruction of the Army, serving as a topographical engineer under Major General Andrew Jackson.
 |
| Major Stephen H. Long |
In 1817, Long headed a military trip exploring the Mississippi River up to its confluence with the Minnesota River. He led a contingent of the 1819 Yellowstone Expedition up the Missouri River, for which he designed an experimental steamboat. The 1820 expedition he led that discovered his namesake mountain was launched to explore the lands of the Louisiana Purchase, specifically to find the sources of the Platte, Arkansas and Red rivers. In 1823 he led military expeditions of the US-Canada borderlands, exploring the Upper Mississippi Valley, the Minnesota River, and the Red River of the North. Long led only five expeditions, but covered 26,000 miles, and famously described the Great Plains as “a great desert.”
Following his military expeditions, Long worked as a consulting engineer for the railroads. He was appointed to a position in the US Corps of Topographical Engineers, remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War, and eventually became Colonel of the Corps until 1863, when it was merged in to the ACE. He died in 1864.
History
Longs Peak climbing lore starts with stories of Native Americans climbing to the tops of the peak to trap eagles and collect their feathers. French fur trappers might have been at the mountain as early as 1799, but there is little evidence any climbed it.
In 1864 William N. Byers and a man known only as Velie made attempts to climb the peak via the Keyhole and the Loft, but failed to make the summit. (They salvaged their trip with an ascent of Mount Meeker, only to find the names of a previous party at the top.) After declaring wings necessary to reach the summit, Byers returned to Longs in 1868 as a member of an expedition led by Major John Wesley Powell.
Powell was a one-armed Civil War veteran who would gain further explorer fame with the first boat trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. His Longs expedition left Grand Lake and, after some failed routes, seven men made the first documented ascent, and left their names in a can on the summit.
By 1871 there were guides taking tourists up the peak, and around the turn of the century the first technical routes were climbed. In the following decades, many new routes were established but the Keyhole Route still remains the easiest and most popular.
Climbing Today
There are over one hundred established routes to the top, but most are technical climbing routes on the east face, or the Diamond, which is one of the premiere big walls for climbing in the US outside of Yosemite. The standard route is the 15-mile round trip, semi-technical Keyhole Route that circumnavigates the upper mountain and takes an average of 10 to 15 hours to complete.
There is no trail to the summit; the maintained, designated trail ends at the Boulder Field, leaving 1.6 miles to go. From there, climbers must scramble over boulders to the Keyhole. From there, the best route is marked with red and yellow bull’s-eyes painted on the rocks, and traverses a series of narrow cliff ledges. After the Ledges, a broad gully of loose rock, called the Trough, must be crossed. Next, the Narrows crosses a sheer vertical rock face and ends at the base of the Homestretch. The Homestretch is a polished granite slab that gains passage to the summit. This section requires Class 3 scrambling, meaning using hands for balance and upward movement; climbing motions, not walking motions. There can be snow or ice on the rocks year-round, making this section extremely treacherous; the most ice-free, and therefore most popular, time to climb is mid-July through mid-September.
Some people camp at the Boulder Field to avoid the early morning start times necessary from the trailhead. The Agnes Vaille Memorial Shelter, built in 1927 at the Boulder Field, is listed on the National Register or Historic Places.
Disaster!
Many people tend to believe that because Longs is so popular, it is safer than other 14ers, but the opposite is the case; many climbers say that the greatest climbing hazard often is being below other people. To date, 57 people have died on Longs Peak, the majority from falls. Countless more suffer injury from the treacherous terrain, and ill effects from conditions such as exhaustion, hypothermia, and altitude sickness.
As with most mountains, many accidents occur on the way down, when fatigue or the false assumption that “the hard part is over” can lead to inattention and poor decisions. It is important to remember that the summit is only the halfway point! As the rangers will remind you, getting to the top of Longs isn’t a hike, it’s a climb! The Keyhole Route crosses vertical rock faces and narrow ledges, is exposed to falling rocks (why people above you are dangerous), and requires scrambling on all fours along steep cliffs and on loose rock. A single slip or trip could be fatal.
“Summit fever” is also a dangerous psychological condition that afflicts climbers. A general rule of thumb is to assess conditions when you arrive at the Keyhole: if they are looking bad, turn back! The problem is, once people get that far - only 1.5 miles to go - they are so focused on summiting that they push on despite deteriorating conditions. (This is also a problem with backcountry activities in winter, when people ignore avalanche warning signs because they don’t want to go home without getting “the goods.”)
On any day of the year conditions can turn bad (cold, windy, foggy, precipitation which makes rocks slippery) in a very short amount of time. Lightning is a major concern when climbing Longs Peak, or any exposed mountain. Afternoon thunderstorms are common, and getting off the peak before any dark clouds form is the reason for starting the hike at 3am.
Considering how many people attempt to summit each year, the number of accidents is pretty small. For more in-depth stories of tragedy on Longs Peak, and other 14ers, check out Colorado 14er Disasters, by Mark Scott-Nash.
Closing
Longs Peak really does stand out when scanning the peaks of the Front Range. I spend lots of time in Rocky Mountain National Park and it is usually visible, whether standing tall and proud in full view, or just poking out a bit higher into the sky than the mountains in front of it. Climbing Longs is certainly on my Colorado Bucket List and I’ve met a few people who have been on the top. It’s true that the climb is a serious undertaking (in my experience the NPS can make things out to be a bit more dangerous than they really are) so I’d like to get some other, tamer 14ers under my belt and get a little better at my rock climbing movements to ensure my confidence with the last 1.5 miles.
I’ve got plenty of photos of Longs from other hikes and seeing it really does inspire me; it keeps my thirst for adventure in exploring the area going strong. One of the best places to get amazing views of Longs (and Meeker) is from the Twin Sisters trail and summit:
 |
| Mount Meeker & Longs Peak from Twin Sisters |
Sources:
- Bernard Gillett, Rocky Mountain National Park: High Peaks: The Climber’s Guide
- Gerry Roach, Colorado’s Fourteeners (3rd Edition)
- NPS, Longs Peak Keyhole Route Frequently Asked Questions
- ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_mark.prl?PidBox=LL1346
- nps.gov/romo/historyculture/historic_buildings.htm
- Paul Nesbit, Longs Peak: Its Story and a Climbing Guide
- peakbagger.com/peak.aspx?pid=5642
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Longs_Peak
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Harriman_Long
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